Vihari Poddar, wife of the director of Siyaram Silk Mills, was arrested for walking through the green channel of Mumbai
International Airport without declaring her jewellery worth Rs 2.35
crore.

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Officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) are quite surprised to see Mumbai socialite Vihari Poddar still behind bars. Vihari Poddar is the wife of Abhishek Poddar of the Siyaram Silk Mills family.

On August 1, Vihari Poddar was arrested for walking through the green channel of the Mumbai international airport without declaring her jewellery worth Rs 2.35 crore and evading custom duty of around Rs 89.5 lakh, as mandated in the Customs Act. She had hidden all this in her undergarment to avoid detection. That clearly failed. She has been in jail since.

A senior DRI official told this correspondent, "We are quite surprised to see Vihari still in jail. We had never expected Vihari to remain behind bars for so many days. It's almost 90 days."

She had appealed for bail at least five times in this while, and all of them were rejected by the magistrate. Vihari Poddar's advocate Ravi Hirani said, "The next hearing is on September 13. We expect Vihari to get bail this time."

Interestingly, the prosecution had opposed the bail plea saying the probe is still on. The DRI official said, "It is our job to oppose bail. But the fact is her judicial custody is not helping us anymore. Vihari has stopped cooperating with us during questioning."

Four years ago, socialite and businesswoman Sheetal Mafatlal was arrested by DRI officials at the Mumbai international airport was booked under Indian Customs Act for carrying jewellery worth about Rs 1 crore in her bag without paying customs duty. She was granted bail the next day on a surety of Rs 5 lakh and with the direction to appear before the police every two days in a week.

Vihari is also being investigated for her 28 visits to Singapore in a year. Vihari's parents are from Singapore and she owns a diamond business there.

Vihari and her uncle Jiten Sheth own a jewellery showroom in Mumbai as well. They had admitted before DRI that 20 per cent of the total jewellery in the showroom are unaccounted for. DRI suspects that in at least some of these trips she could have been used for smuggling jewellery.